Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
By Stuart Shea
You can’t cut the lawn
Like Carlos Z. pitches.
You’d lose hold of the mower
And get 80 stitches.
You can’t do your taxes
Like Carlos Z. throws.
You’d ball up receipts
And punch your own nose.
You can’t do brain surg’ry
Like Carlos Z. hurls.
Your patients would die
While you did angry twirls.
But there’s nothing like watching the dervish in blue
When he harnesses everything that he can do.
Just ask HOU.
Posted 9/17/08
by James Finn Garner
Milwaukee’s head honcho Ned Yost
Led his teams to October–almost.
When CC Sabathia
Didn’t prove a pa-NA-cea,
Ned’s career with the Brewers was toast.
Posted 9/16/08
by Sheila Bernstein
“Peanuts, popcorn, cold beer,”
Shouts the voice of the vendor.
Of course, we’re at the ballpark
In all of its splendor.
It’s the crack of the bat,
The spit of the pitcher — well, sure, you get the picture.
Root for the home team.
It’s a shame if they lose.
What the heck, I’m tanked up on booze!
Baseball…there’s nothing to match.
Where am I now?
Wrigley Field, natch!
Posted 9/15/08
By James Finn Garner
As ten decades of failure concluded
(The odds against which—mighty steep!),
The Three Fates sat in the Wrigley bleachers,
One last great appointment to keep.
There Clotho with distant expression
Spun thread from her distaff with ease,
The flaxen content of life in her hands,
Her scorecard spread over her knees.
Her sister Lachesis sat by her
To measure each thread to its length,
Her face a smear of SPF 50
As the sun beat down in its strength.
Lastly, Atropos, peddler of doom,
Whose shears sever man’s vital thread,
Was letting the line pile up at her feet
And glassily staring ahead.
What could cause the Fates’ dereliction,
Prolonging the Cubs’ misery?
What forces conspire to cruelly delay
The end of this sad century?
Beside the gals sat die-hard Bacchus,
With grapes twined in his Cubs visor.
“You can’t leave now—we can still score some runs!
Hey Beer Man—bring four more Budweisers!”
Posted 9/12/08
by JHB
Goodbye, Manuel Aristides,
At times we all were far too cruel,
But you had the grace to point both hands
While smilin’ like a fool.
They disparaged you in the Herald,
Made innuendoes in the Globe.
They chased you all around the Hub,
Caught in flashbulbs like a strobe.
And it seems to me you lived your life
With your dreadlocks in the wind,
Steppin’ quickly in the Monster
Just to take a whiz,
And you would have been our hero,
But you were just a kid.
Your time here ran out long before
Your legend ever did.
Manny being Manny’s tough,
The toughest role you ever played,
But your bat made you a superstar,
And pain’s the price you paid.
Even when you left,
The press still had too much to say.
All that Boston.com would comment
Was that Manny didn’t want the trade.
And it seems to me you lived your life
With your dreadlocks in the wind,
Catchin’ flies and givin’ high-fives
Before you’d throw it in,
And you would have been our hero,
But you were just a kid,
Your time here ran out long before
Your legend ever did.
Goodbye, Manuel Aristides,
Though I never knew you at all,
You had the feel to play left field,
Fielding caroms off the Wall.
Goodbye, Manuel Aristides,
From the young boy in a Monster Seat,
Who saw you as something not so infantile,
Maybe what he would like to be,
And it seems to me you lived your life
With your dreadlocks in the wind,
If the role was just too much to bear,
It’s not as if you sinned,
And you would have been our hero,
But you were just a kid,
Your time here ran out long before,
Your legend ever did.
Posted 9/10/08